'Ace's' Reworked Flight Path
Musical Journeys to Signature Theatre for Complete Makeover

By Jane Horwitz
Special to The Washington Post
Wednesday, August 27, 2008

The musical "Ace" has taken a journey from the land of dreams to the land of truth and been much transformed in the process. Earlier productions of the show, in St. Louis, Cincinnati and San Diego, used dream sequences that some critics didn't like, and that composer Richard Oberacker ultimately rejected himself.

"We found it was easier and more truthful to draw on real experience" and to "get farther away from fantasy-melodrama," says Oberacker, who wrote the lyrics and book with Robert Taylor. They have taken parts of their own childhoods and families -- secrets kept from kids, parents' mental illness, adoption, war, flying -- in re-creating what Oberacker now calls a "metaphorically autobiographical musical." It runs through Sept. 28 at Signature Theatre.

Set partly in the 1950s, "Ace" is about 10-year-old Danny, who is put into temporary foster care by his suicidally depressed mother (played by Jill Paice). As his mother recovers, she sends Danny (Dalton Harrod) packages of mementos of the father whose real story she has hidden from him because of her painful memories. Danny learns of his father's and grandfather's lives as pilots in the world wars.

"She's piecing together the historical past that she's kept from him emotionally all these years," Taylor explains, giving the boy "the legacy he deserves."

Oberacker and Taylor, a history buff who speaks seven languages, met in 2002 when Oberacker was conducting for the national tour of "The Lion King" and Taylor was the first violinist. Having worked on "Ace" with two other collaborators, Oberacker finally rewrote it with Taylor. He found the key to the musical in Tom Brokaw's "The Greatest Generation," which included stories of war widows who withheld affection from the children who reminded them of the husbands they'd lost.

" 'Ace' is not about war, because war is a metaphor," Oberacker says."It's about telling the truth -- and out of truth-telling comes good parenting . . . and how to deal with the past."

After critical reviews in San Diego last year and remembering his good experience a few years ago at Signature with the premiere of his "The Gospel According to Fishman" (written with Michael Lazar), Oberacker suggested that producers Tom Smedes and Nancy Nagel Gibbs take "Ace" to Eric Schaeffer.

He was familiar with the script -- and he helped nurture a complete makeover.

"Most people would be scared of that," Schaeffer says. "They would be scared of saying, well, we're going to keep the same idea, but we're going to rewrite it. There's not one page that has remained the same. It's like doing a brand-new show."

It's also a difficult piece. "This show had 3,600 bars of music . . . an average musical has maybe 2,100," Schaeffer says. "Even though there are all these book scenes [spoken dialogue], everything is underscored, like a movie. It's a huge puzzle, putting it together."

Oberacker, who as his music-director self now leads the orchestra for Cirque du Soleil's "KÁ" production in Las Vegas, is unfazed by the multiple incarnations. "The best shows take time," he says. "The best of the best germinate for years."

He now calls the tough reviews last year "a gift. We knew things weren't working . . . sometimes you need a big slap upside the head."

Follow Spot

· Spotted about town: Richard Thomas, the British composer of "Jerry Springer: The Opera." On Sunday he caught Studio 2ndStage's boisterous production of the show and met the cast and designers. With him was mezzo-soprano Loré Lixenberg, who originated the role of Baby Jane in London.